Sunday, March 15, 2009

Green Weaving


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"How do you come up with your ideas?"

I get this question from parents, friends and even kids. I think A LOT. I think of ideas in the middle of the night, in the shower, in the car...and constantly re-think them. Sometimes I'll be inspired by something and try to think how I can do it. Sometimes I just get that "a-ha moment." Sometimes not all my ideas are "invented" by me, but I try to make them mine through how they are applied and taught. Like yesterday's project. I am not the first one to use sticks for looms, but I tried to come up with an original idea how to expand the idea.

Green Weaving was brought on by thinking about a class for St. Patrick's Day. Green. I had wanted to do a weaving project for a while and thinking green, I thought..."GREEN" as in RECYCLE! I do a lot of brainstorming in all of my processes.

I began saving cardboard boxes from packaged food items, odd bit of ribbons and bows off valentine chocolates, bubble wrap, plastic from tissue boxes...you get the idea. Then, I cut those items into strips. We used those things to weave through our loom.

I made the looms from branches in our backyard. Our kitchen was full of branches! I broke them into pieces and hot glued them together. Then I wrapped yarn around to use as the weft. They turned out so COOL! I made 40 looms hoping that would be enough and it was-barely!

Had quite a few kids and adults yesterday and they had a great time! A few parents even joined in the fun.

Everything is always set up in advance. I ended up putting our more items, I wish I had taken another pic. Oh well. You get the idea. Students each had a loom, weavable items and scissors. I encouraged them to walk around and get other items if there was something from another pile they wanted to use.

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I took a few pictures of work alone with permission. These are from a 4 year old and a 6 year old. So much fun!
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I had a few looms leftover and am excited to weave with the boys this week!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this.....love everything you've done. I found you on The Crafty Crow and have spent the last 45minutes looking through your blog. I would like to use some of your ideas in my parent/child program. I love having projects for kids and just when the grown up starts to "help" I offer them (grown up) their own project to create. I love the way you take the kids into the museum and read books related to the artist, their style and the children's projects. Thank you for this. I hope it's ok if I use some of your ideas.

Thanks,
Gail
www.smilingtreegail.com

Unknown said...

I love this idea. Works great with the 4th grade CA weaving standard.

Anonymous said...

I love this idea so much!! can't wait to try!! Loveyour blog too!
www.cohabiTOT.om